Does iron deficiency cause behaviourial problems?

[chicaguapa]

DH thinks DD (4.5) is vitamin & iron deficient. I also think she is as she won't eat anything with them in. She has most other essentials through decent breakfasts like porridge, good lunches with cheese & wholewheat pasta. But getting any decent amount of vitamin C in her to help absorb iron is impossible. She won't even tolerate vitamin drops as she can taste them! (She actually can!) We used to put them in chocolate milk but now she won't drink chocolate milk!

We used to make up pasta sauces full of veg but now we are in a new regime (set by the HV) of not making a fuss about mealtimes so she won't eat that anymore either. She'll only eat pasta with cheese on. If it has any sauce, she leaves it! We have been on the new regime for about 8 months now .

We are experiencing some quite bad behaviour at the moment and wondered if it was due to this. Last year we picked up on a link between some breakfast cereals and bad behaviour in the morning, which we have now sorted by switching to porridge and weetabix.

Should I take her to the doctors for a blood test?

Low iron levels can cause a lot of nasty stuff, most notably problems with brain development. Treacle/molasses has loads of iron, so do beans and lentils and so on. Wholemeal pasta has some iron, too. Also, pate and red meat, if she eats meat?

Your daughter's iron levels are probably fine, but if it's worrying you, getting it checked might be good.

Is your HVs system of "no fuss at mealtimes" working? Are mealtimes better, is she eating better? We have a policy of no fuss at mealtimes, too, but it's more "no fuss from kids". My DS1 (4.5) is expected to try every food served to him, although he's allowed to not like things, once he's had a few mouthfulls.

Have you tried spatone? DS1 can taste anything but we managed to hide them it in orange juice. Sounds like thats not an option for you but worth trying.

We had a terrible time with food for ds1 from aged 2 until a few months ago (he's almost 7) he would only eat gluten free bread, buckwheat pancakes (we'd hide cheese in those), and agluten free cheese and tomato pancakes. He would drink juices sometimes. We didn't iron supplement routinely, but when his iron levels were checked they were low normal. I found I could tell when his iron levels were dropping as he would be very pale and very tired. A week of spatone would perk him up. I think tiredness is more common than bad behaviour really (I was mildly anaemic after ds3 and I felt absolutely washed out)

gluten free cheese and tomato pizza I mean- I'm getting all my words confused today!

The HV strategy was as follows:
Food is to be placed in front of DD. She then eats what she wants from it. She gets no food-related attention ie we're not allowed to tell her to eat up, start eating or even to try it. Just ignore any behaviour. When we've finished, she gets a 5-minute warning that the table is about to be cleared.

This HAS helped us sort out the "behaviour" at mealtimes. Before she used to end up face down on the floor screaming because she didn't want to eat whatever was given to her. Now she will sit quietly and will even tolerate seeing veg on her plate, even though she doesn't touch it and won't eat anything which has been touching it! But she doesn't always eat something and often goes to bed without having eaten anything at all.

What hasn't been sorted is the actual "eating" which I have been told will come later and that we can't actually force her to eat, we can only control the behaviour. To be honest I'm banking on school sorting out that issue as she'll be having school dinners and hopefully seeing her friends eat will help. The HV says it takes ages for children to become vitamin deficient and we only worry because we're "food aware".

Your HV is probably right about vitamin deficiency, I do worry more about iron because of the association between it and brain development.

Our DS1 has never been a terrible eater, so our experience may well not be relevant. We used to do more or less as you do now, but there was too much complaining. So the new rules are:

• he gets served a small amount of whatever foods are on offer.
• he must try everything (no punishment if he doesn't, though, but he doesn't get any more of any of the foods if he doesn't try everything).
• he cannot whinge or moan (e.g. "that's disgusting", "that looks disgusting", "that's horrible", "eww".) He can say "I don't like that" or similar. Whinging and moaning means he has to leave the table right away, no more food for him. We did this once.
• to get dessert, he must eat a reasonable amount of food. Dessert is fruit, yogurt or similar, about 90% of the time.

This moved DS1 from an OK eater to an excellent one - he will try anything now, and eats reasonable quantities things like leafy salads that he never would have considered before.

Does she eat any red meat? If so, then Vit C isn't necessary to help absorption of the iron. It's only needed for iron from vegetable sources, which is less easily absorbed than haem iron from meat.

If you do want her to take vit c supplements, Haliborange do a nice one called Halibonbons (IIRC), which are chewable, like crunchy sherbet sweets.

But your HV may be right, that you are over-aware because of the food issues. It could be that the bad behaviour is one final blast at the regime, before submitting to it.

No, she doesn't eat red meat. She'll only eat chicken in nugget form (which I make myself with chicken breast). We used to put mince in the pasta sauce but that's refused now.

Perhaps the thought of a blood test at the doctors might be enough to spur her on to eating something good for her! But I don't want it to be a threat.